


it's all pixie dust

by septmars



Category: SKAM Austin
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 19:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14921187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septmars/pseuds/septmars
Summary: Dog walking with Daniel.





	it's all pixie dust

Their house has a schedule for walking Pixie. Grace gets Sunday morning and Tuesday evening, Billie’s are Saturday morning and Wednesday evening, and Aunt Lynn has the rest. Sometimes one of the girls would join her, sometimes it was Billie or Aunt Lynn, but most of the time walking Pixie is a solitary affair. Grace always looked forward for these dog walking excursions. The stark Texas sun, cool dewed grass, and a bouncy black terrier: the ingredients for a perfect, calm stroll.

Her dreams of future idyll is broken on Saturday evening, with a text message from Daniel.

**_Dog park date tomorrow?_ **

How does he even _know_? Is he psychic? He must be psychic. Or at least have access to some government database. His ability to obtain information, especially pertaining to her, is quite impressive.

**_Are you wiretapping me, Donald?_** Grace texts back. **_How do you know it’s my turn to walk Pixie tomorrow?_**

His reply came almost immediately:

**_Saw your dog on instagram, and took a shot. Must be my lucky day_ **

Ah. That makes sense.

Grace doesn’t know what to say after that, so she leaves him on read. Let him sweat a little.

A couple of hours later, she gets another text from Daniel.

**_Is this a yes?_ **

If she lets him think like that he might show up at her house tomorrow, so she texts him the time and place (8 a.m., at the nearest park to her house). He replies with a heart emoji. Grace laughs a little at his reply (though she won’t ever admit it to anyone), mainly because he really doesn’t look like the type who uses heart emojis. Daniel Williamson is full of surprise, it seems. Maybe tomorrow won’t be so bad after all.

—

“You’re late.”

“Calm down, Donald. It’s only a couple of minutes past eight.”

Daniel smiles. He looks good, Grace begrudgingly admits. The green wool sweater he’s wearing really suits him. Damn it. She really is weak when it comes to him.

“So this is the great Pixie I’ve heard so much about,” he says, kneeling.

“Careful, she’s a great judge of character, so she might bite you,” says Grace.

Pixie, though, is evidently not listening to her. She leaps out to Daniel’s outstretched arms, barking happily as he pets her, the little traitor.

“Oh yeah, she’s a mean bitch alright.” Daniel chuckles, ruffling Pixie’s fur.

For some reason, the sight of Daniel with Pixie brings a warm feeling in Grace’s belly. Great, not only does her dog betray her, her body does now too.’

“So are we going on a walk or are we just gonna stand around here all day?” she says pointedly, attempting to regain control of herself.

“Lead the way.” Daniel releases Pixie and stands up.

“Technically, Pixie’s going to lead the way. I’m just a slave to her whims.”

“Alright.” Daniel smiles again. He has a dimple in the left side of his face, Grace notices. And then she mentally chastises herself for noticing it in the first place. Damn it.

Neither of them say anything for several minutes, the silence between them occasionally broken by Pixie’s barks. They are taking Pixie’s favorite trail, a well-trodden jogging path snaking across the park. It’s a cool autumn morning here in Austin. Along the way they pass people lounging around, spreading blankets on the dewed grass and playing guitars. Sometimes, a jogger runs past them. There are also people standing around the paths, handing leaflets to passerby. Twice Grace is offered brochures, one for a newly-opened vegan bakery which is converted into a gluten-free gastropub at night, and another for a student performance art with a photo of a man in Tin Man-like makeup playing a kazoo. Twice she declines.

 “So,” Daniel says after a while. “You come here often?”

Grace smiles. “Wow. I actually have never heard of that before.”

“I’m expanding my repertoire.” He grins. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”

“God forbid. I might have to find another self-involved football player to bug me.”

Grace feels herself relaxing a little. She doesn’t realize she’s so tense about the prospect of Daniel meeting Pixie until now. In a way, this is the first time that he’s ever met a member of her family, someone she knows outside of school. Letting him this close into her life is quite unnerving, a small part of her can’t help but feel she’s making the same mistake.  But the banter between them is a familiar ground. This she knows.

“Are you implying that you _like_ being bugged by me?”

“I plead the fifth.” But the smile tugging at her mouth betrays her.

“You didn’t answer my question, though.”

A man jogs past them and Daniel steps in closer to her side to avoid him. For the briefest moment their hands touch, and her heartbeat soars.

“I have a dog and live nearby. You do the math,” Grace says, a little bit brusque, shaken still by that incidental touch.

“I’m flunking math, remember?”

Grace smirks. “We’re still at that, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daniel says, a very serious expression on his face. “My terrible grades in math is actually a serious problem. I can get kicked out of the team for it. I still need your help with homework and lessons.”

“Right.” Grace rolls her eyes. He can’t fool her; she’s seen his National Honors Society plaques. “Well, to answer your question, I usually come here with Pixie on weekend mornings and weekday evenings, after dance practice.”

As if she knows she’s being talked about, Pixie stops in her tracks and begins to whine.

“Oh,” says Grace, having seen this behavior all too often. “She’s going to poop.”

“At least she has the manners to do her business in the grass,” Daniel comments, smiling as Grace bends down to clean up after Pixie. “Here, let me take that from you.”

 “Such a gentleman.”

“You know what they say: the couple that cleans dog shit together, stays together,” Daniel says, throwing the plastic bag containing Pixie’s poop to the nearest trash can with frightening accuracy (he _is_ a quarterback).

“Okay, first, all you did was throw the shit away,” Grace tells him as they resume their walk. “Second, we are most emphatically _not_ a couple.”

“Sorry, my dumb jock brain can’t understand big words like emphatically so I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Grace stifles a laughter. Daniel is apparently still adamant about keeping his whole dumb football guy shtick with her (as if his academic accolades aren’t prominently displayed in his house) and it somehow turns into a kind of inside joke between them. She should really be alarmed that she and Daniel has developed a close enough camaraderie to have inside jokes, but she doesn’t. In fact, she finds it amusing, and exciting.

Fuck. She really is helpless.

“Alright, Mr. Star Quarterback,” says Grace. “Let me use my normal human to dumb jock translator for a second: No. We are not a couple.”

“Yet.”

“No no no no.” Grace thinks of Kelsey, the excitement in her voice whenever she talks about Daniel, her ill-concealed anguish when he rejects and ignores her. She thinks of two years ago, in Dallas, another football player, another heartbreak. “No ‘yet.’ We will never be a couple.”

Daniel shrugs, nonchalant. “Considering your dog already likes me, it’s only a matter of time before we become a real couple, Grace Amelie Olsen.”

“You know, I never really knew how you got my middle name,” Grace says, ignoring the fluttering in her chest when he mentions her full name. She’s resigned to the fact that her mind and body will never come into an agreement when it comes to Daniel. “I didn’t put it in my Facebook or any of my other social media accounts.”

“I’ll tell you on our next date.” Daniel smiles impishly.

Grace laughs. “Pretty confident, aren’t you?”

“I have a good hunch.”

Pixie’s walk slows down, and she barks once; they stop at the park café. Grace usually comes here during their morning walk, buying a morning cup of coffee for herself and a Puppuccino for Pixie. Pixie must’ve remembered and is waiting for her Puppuccino.

“Pixie and I usually get something to drink right about now,” Grace says, gesturing towards the café. Against her better judgment, she continues, “Wanna join us?”

“Ah, I didn’t bring my wallet,” Daniel replies, patting his pockets. He eyes the crowded café. “I’ll just wait here.”

Grace bites her lip. This is her chance to get away from him. Slip into the crowds, enjoy a few minutes of solitude, and come up with an excuse. _But_ , a part of her protests _, it’s cruel to just ditch him like that_. And it’s not like she does not enjoy their walk together. On the contrary, this has been one of the most fun she had walking Pixie in quite a while. Though Grace loves Pixie with all her heart, she can’t exactly talk to her. Daniel is a great conversation partner, if anything else. Their banter entertains and stimulates her in an otherwise routine activity. And he did help her clean up after Pixie.

“That’s all right, I’ll pay,” Grace finds herself saying.

Daniel looks stunned. “You will?”

“Yeah, you can pay me back at our next date,” Grace says breezily as she walks to the café, trying to stay her rapidly beating heart. And when Daniel laughs and links his arm to hers, she doesn’t protest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tommyshelbys on Twitter for giving me the idea of a Daniel/Grace dog walking date. But this is not their 1st date, I'd put it somewhere between the neon lights scene (or the equivalent) and the auction party. 
> 
> Special thanks to all the Noorhelm stans on Twitter for love, support, and headcanons. You guys rock.
> 
> This has not been beta'd, so feel free to let me know of any spelling or grammatical mistakes.


End file.
